Tag Archives: Funeral rites

I believe in the Big Bang and I believe it is the breath of God and it is God. Exhale creation, inhale entropy. And it is all Now. That part of the Now that forms into Ingram is part of Us before we are born and part of Us when we separate out of the moment we inhabit as individual particles and return to the greatness of All. And the part of Creation that was his life is still happening.

I am still laughing with my grandmother. I am still gossiping with my dad. I am still holding my infant son and I am still fucking up all they ways that I did that, too. And my future is unknown to me, but it is already happening, too. Not as it is supposed to happen, simply as it does happen.

So, that part of the liturgy that talks about “as it was and is and evermore shall be” really works for me. My dad is with me forever, I just can’t hold his hand any more. The particle of Now that is “me” misses that and cries sometime.

I do not believe that the Breath and God are separate. I believe Singularity.

I think I have always had a curiosity about what people do at the end of life, their own and the lives of people they know. Funeral rites, grieving, afterlife beliefs, all intrigue me.

I remember being left in the car while my grandparents went to a funeral because they thought I was too young to go and, besides, I didn’t know the man who had died. I was curious to know what happened at a funeral and was really annoyed not to be allowed to go. They were probably right, though. I’d have been asking questions the whole time and annoyed everyone there.

I think I was 4 or 5 at the time.

Because of that fascination, I tend to enjoy wandering in old cemeteries. I take pictures of the markers and look for the stories of the family, such as I can puzzle out. I am intrigued by the symbols used on the tombstones and fascinated by the elaborate decorations and money spent. The vast tracts of land that are used to grown stones from boxes of bones make me scratch my head, too. There are monuments to people who are remembered by no one living.

I tend to have an outside-looking-in view when someone I know is dealing with the death of a loved one, even when it is one of my own relatives. I don’t believe in life after death. I believe all time is Now, we just see it from somewhen that is limited because we are experiencing Eternity from the pinhole of our hereandnow perspective.

This means that I try to make the hereandnow good and hold it in my memory with love.